I really only hung out with him over one terrible summer. And in the end, I didn't do anything to help him.

I was living in northern Arizona, working for the newspaper, getting over a bad break up, but mostly I was drinking and doing drugs. I had moved into an old apartment complex that was really a converted motel. Same small rooms, same small square structure. Two stories, all the cars parked right outside the rooms. None of the apartments had AC so at nights people gathered on the walkways to smoke pot or cigarettes in the open air. You could hear the rush of the highway.

I lived next to an ex marine sniper. I lived above two lesbian grad students and their leashless dogs (Gaia and Diana, labs both).

The nights were hot and each resident would only half-dress. Gym shorts and sports bras and everyone's body was wet with sweat, heavy with fatigue. We'd listen to Gecko's broken radio or the couple at the end shout at each other in Spanish. I would sit on the cement and drink tall boys and kick around the broken shards of sidewalk.

Mike the Killer didn't actually live in the complex. His brother did. Mike the Killer lived in his truck. It was big and white and didn't run. He kept it on blocks in the parking lot and no one ever cared to ask him to move it.

I met him outside one night; he was skulking around with lengths of wire. Said he was trying to snare a skunk that'd been bothering him.

Mike the Killer had a long, hippy-style pony tail. He was broad across the shoulders. I never asked his age, but I'd guess it was mid-thirties.

That summer, Mike the Killer and I would sit in his truck and drink beers and listen to the Rolling Stones' album Sticky Fingers.

We got onto the topic of jail and I asked him if he'd ever been and he had. It was for kidnapping.

Kidnapping? I didn't know that actually happened.

He told me he hadn't even meant to kidnap the guy. He was actually trying to kill him.

It was, like, ten years ago, he said. In Phoenix. He took his friend, not really a friend, just some kid he'd just met that night, he took him out behind a Circle K so they could do meth together but something went wrong and Mike the Killer wound up beating the kid. Tried to grate his face off against the brick of the building. That's what he said. He was trying to remove his face.

After he thought he killed him, he stuffed him in his own trunk. Mike took the keys and drove the kid up into the mountains to throw his body away.

The kid got out of the trunk somehow and leapt from the moving car. Rolled down the highway.

I don't know why I still hung out with Mike the Killer after that but I did. I thought he was interesting.

He knocked on my door one night and told me I had a naked neighbor. And he could see her through the windows. He said I should come check it out.

Mike the Killer disappeared for a few days and when he came back said he'd been in the forest. Said he was gonna beat up his dad when he got back to New Jersey. Said he was gonna get a job at the dog food plant on the east side of town.

I started to come to my senses about all this in the fall, when the weather cooled down and I got a better job. It's weird how seasons can do that sort of thing to you.

Mike disappeared for longer and longer periods of time. He called me once in November and said he'd been in Phoenix and he was living with a porn producer and he said he'd be back up soon as he could afford to fill his gas tank. Said he was going to write a book about his time there, and he was going to call it "Two Months in Hell." I ended the phone call before he could ask for money.

 

Lane Kareska was born in Texas and grew up in Chicago. He is currently in graduate school at Southern Illinois University.